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Massive turnout at Democratic lawmakers’ town halls as Republicans hide from voters
(www.advocate.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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politics
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You gotta draw the line somewhere. Retirement age seems like as good a place as any.
Why do you have to draw the line somewhere?
I feel like a broken record here, but the huge uptick in ageism I see in relation to politics seems like it's not going to, ahem, age well given the amount of things I keep seeing about slowing down/reversing aging...
I mean, yeah, it sounds kind of silly until it doesn't. I remember reading about/thinking about things like AI (even if it's not AGI - things like LLMs are here and disrupting the shit out of things). Same with self-driving cars. And yeah, neither of these things are perfect, but they are having an effect on society - people I know mostly got very smug and dismissive about these notions just 20 years ago. They are rather quiet about them now. I think the same thing is true about aging. Even if the breakthroughs are extremely mild and stay that way for decades, maybe even forever, suppose average healthspan is increased even 5 years. That will make (upper) age limits look very myopic and dated.
Then you update the maximum age because the younger people can be convinced something’s changed instead of emailing Tim Cook about being locked out of their Facebook. This is a non argument using the slippery slope fallacy in place of facts
I'm still just not understanding how being tech savvy relates at all to good stewardship of government?
And I say that as someone that works in tech. I find this notion baffling. I know how to code, I know databases, I know the cloud, I know a lot about networking, and I've used a variety of operating systems and I've built and maintained things in lots of different paradigms and in different types of industries, and not only for browsers. People usually look to me for their tech support. So what? I wouldn't want me to be running the government, as not one bit of that matters to running government.
Our leaders also know jack shit about a whole lot of engineering and technology specifics in a lot of other specific areas, not just computers, and regardless of their age. So what? When it comes to setting policy, they should be working with experts from the various specialties. If someone has to explain something like nuclear fusion to them like they are a fourth grader, that's how it has to be. I don't see how knowing anything about one vendor's specific product (such as Facebook) matters in the slightest.
I'd much rather have people with the wisdom to realize that while a lot of various specifics about tech might change, that an awful lot of things stay the same, especially when it comes to matters of human nature and morality....and that wisdom usually comes with age.
Lmao I find it hard to believe you work in tech based on your comments on ai. Now i see we’re just playing the pretend game where you can take one example and pretend it’s my whole point. Fucking good riddance homie I’m not trying to argue in bad faith with someone who clearly has no clue what they’re talking about
Because mentally incompetent people shouldn't be in charge of steering the government. Mental competency drops fast at higher ages.
Because I only want people who have a bested interest in the future to be the ones crafting it.
You shouldn't be allowed to vote or drive after a specific age because you become a danger to people around you.
It's not about how long you live so much as getting stuck in your ways. Old people don't learn new things and adapt the way young people do. Humans solidify the way they do things in their 20s, make some fine tuning in their 30s/40s, and then pretty much stick to those habits for the rest of their life. With the way technology is progressing we can't have stagnant people leading an evolving society.
There are exceptions to every rule but that doesn't mean statistics aren't valuable information to base decisions on. Do you want people stuck in the past making laws about the future?
I just don't understand this line of thinking at all. I don't want people to have their moral fiber evolve. Bernie has been right for decades now, as a for instance. I wouldn't want him cut out of politics based on some stupid and myopic ageist rule.
Also, this line of thinking is what I'm pointing out is what is stuck in the past, by the way - I'm saying if we put into place some arbitrary age limits based on looking backwards, just as technology upends all this, that would be the fixed mode of thinking about humans, their capabilities as they age, and proper stewardship of the country.
If people start having longer healthspans, I most definitely want people with the broader view to be running things, and that would mean people far older than they are right now, even. In that scenario, the older the better, in my view. In some cases, you have "old souls" among very young people who have the intelligence to talk to people that are older than them, or glean lessons from the past in other ways. This is often quite rare, unfortunately.
Now, I would be in favor of having tests for capabilities, much like we have for older drivers in at least some states.
Bernie is a great guy but that's an example proving the point I'm making. He's saying the same things he's said for decades. He's not wrong about most things but his stance isn't really evolving either. He's pretty revolutionary for someone in his age bracket but if you look at his peers he's pretty much the only one that you could say has a relatively modern view of politics, and even that is mostly because the US is so far behind the rest of the western world that his moderate positions seem more extreme by comparison. All the other old politicians saying the same things they've said for decades sound like living fossils, and that's not going to get better if they start living longer, it's going to get worse.
So you’d be fine with a child holding the role? After all why draw a line. Age relates to capability on both ends.
I hate that’d you’re downvoted and no response because this is the right take. We have age limits already but old people don’t want those to apply to them because … no reason they just want to continue holding power
I'd be for tests of capabilities past some age. This would be the correct course of action, especially as technology may very well upend all these fixed and static notions about aging. Setting arbitrary upper age limits is kind of stupid even without that. We all have known people that have stayed quite sharp into very, very high ages, well beyond retirement age.
The notion of a child holding the role is of course silly.
Sure but let’s talk about realistic solutions though. Ideally all public servants would have to pass a civic test as well as a physical and mental acuity tests. That would eliminate people like mtg and trump from ever holding office (because ya know you gotta be at least literate to pass a test). However there is no precedent for what you’re proposing. It would require agreement on testing requirements, some independent agency to do said testing, a protocol for updating test content and most importantly trusting that the legislators will trust scientists and educators on what these tests should be. Current government would never do any of those things and at least there is a precedent for age limits. Yes in a perfect world it would be some form of test but in the real world we gotta look for solutions that might actually happen. Top end age restrictions have a precedent and would drastically improve the state of our governing body.
Note: yes I understand that a 40-some year old mtg is magnitudes worse than even Bernie’s corpse at governing, that’s undeniable.
So...you think that Congress is going to realistically pass some arbitrary upper age limit for the job?